Sandvox, RapidWeaver, iWeb, and true WYSIWYG editing

[(vikm)]

M A V I C wrote:
There's so many other options out there that are easier, more robust, more future proof...

I can't necessarily disagree with the robust or future proof part, but if you're throwing the "easier" bit in there, I'm not buying it. I don't think you can get an easier app that is ALSO more robust & future proof.

We're all ears if you can supply the names of all of these options. It honestly would be very helpful.

[M A V I C]

Robert - does your example site sell a product or service? Maybe not a shopping cart, but promote a product or service one way or another?

Is your requirement about not having it be a web-based solution really that important?

[jdc]

Robert M wrote:
jdc,

Similar to what I'm envisioning but with a different purpose. That and a bit more complex that what I have in mind. I'm not looking for a rotating news section nor a calendar.

Robert

that was for mavic... it took me about 2 hours to build that site from scratch. rollover links, colors, font, all done in iWeb.

[M A V I C]

jdc wrote:
[quote=M A V I C]
[quote=jdc]Please enlighten us -- which ones are those?

Give me an example site - like the purpose of it.
OK -- for my daughters preschool.

maybe 25 pages total. needs an updateable calendar on one page.

also has a rotating "news & events" section.

http://web.me.com/krisandjeff/FNS/FNS_we...ector.html
For that example WordPress seems like a good fit. Why:
- Much better SEO. They provide a service and they want people to be able to find it. The way that site is coded it doesn't do SEO very well at all.
- Easier to maintain. You can have multiple people who can access the site and update content. You can set it so some people can create content, while others have to approve it. They don't have to contact you each time they need an update.
- Easier calendar setup. You can setup a calendar to work the way you have it, or integrate with something like Google Calendar or any number of other methods. It'll be easier to maintain and likely look better as well.
- Easier news & events. You can setup the content to be much more dynamic and automatically populate that empty column. That way you can setup events on a timer so they come and go as needed. And news can easily be run as blog and that list recent posts. You can put those on a timer too.
- Easier to upgrade the design. With that content, you can easily change an entire design to a new one and not have to change or copy & paste any content to the new site. Just choose the new design and be done.
- Auto generated nav. Right now if you go to Parent Info then click on Admissions, the Admission link goes away even though this doesn't happen on other pages. Making sure this works is all done automatically (or manually if you set it that way.) Also, things like current page, hover... of nav links are much easier to create and change.
- Contact form. Rather than providing an email address to get gobbled up by spam bots, you can use a contact form. Setting one up is way easier than using something like iWeb.
- Changes with the times. When new tools come out, they get built in. You don't have to rebuild the whole site. SEO rules change? Update your SEO plugin. Calendar tools change? Update your calendar plugin.

Some other things that could be done:
- Facebook integration - Easily connect WP with FB to be able to help with things like events and online marketing
- Twitter integration - same as above
- Mobile editing - mobile app to easily add and update content, including posting pictures (eg when you're at an event)
- Mobile design - there's quite a few ways to do this, but you can get a mobile theme which is a basic version of the site that will work with mobile devices and better work with touch screens than your typical computer interface.
- Email list. Want to better manage email lists? WP can integrate with Mailchimp to make it easier and to make sure your emails are in compliance with email laws.

I could go on, but I think you get the idea. Overall, setting it up would take less time than it would in iWeb, and the end result would be far more capable and far more future proof.

[Seacrest]

Online CMS systems, IMO, are way more suitable for modern website creation than proprietary WYSIWYG software, for a number of reasons:

(In the time it took me to write this, of course, MAVIC weighed in as expected, so there might be some duplication of concepts.)

• Allows non-technical people to make minor edits
  
• Allows a distributed team to make content changes
  
• Tracks changes made by everyone and allows for immediate reversion to previous changes
  
• Most of them follow web best practices and hide that complexity from users. This lets the site administrator concentrate on content and/or presentation.
  
• The systems are more scalable than WYSIWYG software and links, pages, sitemaps, etc are all handled internally, and usually can be configured to follow SEO best practices
  
• While there is the possibility that an Open Source project can be abandoned, forked or otherwise fall out of active development, because these systems separate content from presentation and code, migration to newer systems is going to be a simpler task than with WYSIWYG software.
  
• Every member of the team does not have to have a licensed version of some software package. Nor does everyone have to be on the same platform. Windows users cannot edit stuff in iWeb or RW, AFAIK.
  
• If actual development is needed, developers can concentrate on development and not minor text changes and the like.
  

The one drawback I can see, and this happens to me often, is that creative decisions can now be left to the "unskilled" and lay people (ie non-designers, developers) often make very bad decisions in terms of formatting and laying out content. This is frustrating for designer types who may spend a lot of time coming up with a very tight look for the site, only to have some secretary (or worse, the boss) come along and shoot it to sh!t because they really like those dancing bananas.

Also, as the creative, it is still very helpful with these systems to "know HTML" and CSS, as it is essential to understand what these technologies are at capable of. If nothing else, using a CMS should free up your time to learn about these things. If you put yourself out there are a professional charging money to create websites, there's really no excuse, IMO, for not understanding the tech behind them.

[Robert M]

Magic,

It is to provide product info, not to sell the product per say. And, yes, the solution cannot be web based under any circumstances. I ( or someone else) must be able to change any aspect of the site with or without access to the net. Changes made when Internet access is unavailable can always be uploaded at a later time.

Transportability is important, too. I need to be able to take the resultant html files be able to edit them in any package. That way, if the packe becomes defunct, the files can be edited with something else with minimal fuss and inconvenience.

Robert

[M A V I C]

Robert M wrote:
Magic,

It is to provide product info, not to sell the product per say. And, yes, the solution cannot be web based under any circumstances. I ( or someone else) must be able to change any aspect of the site with or without access to the net. Changes made when Internet access is unavailable can always be uploaded at a later time.

Robert

Wow. I hope whomever came up with that restriction has a complete understanding of the ramifications of that. You could still use something like WordPress and make changes locally and then push them live, but that would add some levels of complexity.

I hope there's some good reason for needing to be able to make changes without internet access, because that's a massive hinderance. That's an extremely rare requirement. More often I hear that anyone who has net access should be able to make changes and not have to rely on someone's local copy.

[Robert M]

Mavic,

See the edit of the post for transportability. I understand the ramifications of keeping the original site local. For my purposes, it's a non issue. This will not be the case in the future. At that point, the site would be handled differently and definitely done on a higher level by a professional.

Robert

[M A V I C]

Robert M wrote:
Mavic,

See the edit of the post for transportability. I understand the ramifications of keeping the original site local. For my purposes, it's a non issue. This will not be the case in the future. At that point, the site would be handled differently and definitely done on a higher level by a professional.

Robert

I'm not entirely sure what you mean by "take the resultant html files be able to edit them in any package". You mean make changes to the content after the files have been exported? Content in WordPress can be changed by anyone with a web browser.

For any site with a goal of promoting the sale of a good or service, disregarding SEO and online marketing best practices just so the site can be edited by someone who's not online is a MAJOR issue. I can't tell you how many sites I've come across that were built with no regard for these things, and just by switching them to a system that does a pretty good job following them, their site is serving them much better. One recent example on a small site, their traffic went up by about 2-3x. The quality of that traffic went way up as well.

And now they want to start doing a video blog... and the functionality to do that is already built in.

[Zoidberg]

Wow, started an avalanche, did I? What I'm looking to do:

* Set up a "business card" kind of web site, where the front page would be news & updates (info regarding the agencies my clients submit to, news regarding changes of form types, etc.) and also have a few additional pages such as my client list, resume, awards, and a simple FAQ.

* Set up a separate site for my RFQ (Request for Qualifications) tracking. The big requirements for this page are that it be (a) able to update quickly and easily and (b) be password-protected. It can't be a blog (due to the nature of the deadline-specific things I list).

* Set up separate sites for my clients to access and download the documents and forms I generate for them. I can do this via email (sometimes), or links via dropbox and/or file transfer sites like YouSendIt as well, but the website keeps a clean list of everything I'm working on for said clients, arranged by due date. In each entry I include links to the documents (easier with iWeb since it allows me to upload the files directly rather than futzing with dropboxing them). (For that alone I'm really going to miss MobileMe hosting.)

Within the above, as a separate page, set up a Project Description Plate page for each client, such as the example I used above; http://web.me.com/coreworks/LE/Projects.html . My clients use these links to send to their clients and prospective clients. This can be achieved via dropbox, in a way, but not as cleanly.

I shouldn't have gotten too comfortable with iWeb/MobileMe hosting, I know, but I did. I don't think I'm going to find a solution that quite serves the way the iWeb/MobileMe combo did.

FWIW, after a day of messing with three possibilities -- Sandvox, RapidWeaver, SquareSite -- Sandvox is winning. There's a few oddities here and there -- and none offer the masking I'm trying to accomplish such as on my sample site above -- but it's the most iWeb like interface and the easiest to use to rebuild things.